Monday, 4 February 2013

A discussion about art from an artists perspective and the problem of character-fuckability. We are so classy.

Alvene: I don't care
much about sameface to be honest as long as it's beautiful, variety for variety
alone is kind of pointless.

Nekromantenhase: Well,
yes one has different priorities concerning beauty and diversity, but sometimes
it just gets ridiculous with groups of people having the same faces and bodies
in one picture.

Also, there is more than
one way to draw "beautiful". That reminds me too much of
super-heroines where you just change the hairstyle and costume and BAM
different character. But yes, diversity just for diversity´s sake is the other
extreme and does not make much sense either. I personally would just find it
boring to draw the same model over and over again.

Alvene: The thing is,
not everybody has a diverse taste - maybe, someone really does have one idea of
beauty. Like, we all have restrictions and they may be tighter or looser, for
example some people can tolerate certain features and abnormalities of the
human body, others just find the person automatically ugly.

I guess I just can´t accept that someone can
only stick to one depiction and one depiction only. One could go with
almond-shaped eyes or with round eyes, or tired-looking eyes. One could make
the lips of the one person a bit fuller or less full; one does not even have to
change the nose if they think it makes their figure automatically ugly. Vary
the chest size a bit. Vary the weight a bit. Trying stuff out makes one realize
one´s tastes. It´s like that person decided to only eat ice cream and only one
flavor of ice cream for the rest of their lives. If he or she likes to, okay,
but I would find it boring.It´s just not how I would do it.

Alvene: I would not
believe somebody with such skills has not tried life drawing and all kinds of
physique before developing their own style, that's unrealistic. I don't quite
agree about realizing one's tastes - yes, one can certainly discover new
things and acquire tastes, but a great lot of stuff is sort of already there,
programmed in your core and you won't get rid of it.

Nekromantenhase: But my
core point still stands: It´s just not how I would do it. Of course, everyone
has a taste in beauty and I do not want anyone to get rid of it, but as I said:
staying at that point all my life I would find kinda boring. And diversity is
not that hard, really. I mean, honestly those women just look all the same. I
just can´t get over it. Fairy tales are such an interesting concept and he
ignores all possibilities of drawing interesting ideas for the sake of having
an army of Barbie dolls... it´s a shame, that´s all ._.Regarding him studying anatomy and so on... I do
not know about that, but this way or the other he surely ignores those classes.
That little red riding hood has no place for organs in that body.

Also, I take it back,
what I said about red riding hood having too little space for her organs. Yes,
you are right, it is stylization, and even when it´s stylization I do not agree
of, I don´t have to bitch about it. I was just angry about the double standard
once again, because his guys look really awesome, but his women (almost) always
have the same face, body and move like bad imitations of porn stars.

Alvene: Indeed,
his girls are all the same, like in Marvel. But being able to draw different
guys means being capable of doing the same with females too, thus is it is a
choice (and double standard), but not inability to draw.

Nekromantenhase: Which is even more tiresome for me
because, well, he CAN draw awesome females theoretically, he just chooses not
to *sigh* For me that is as if he is able to fly but insists on very elaborate
crawling because it looks better in his opinion.

Alvene: Well, that's a
matter of taste entirely. I sort of still have a strong feeling it's a
commercial thing, but one never knows.

Nekromantenhase: If
all his work would be just for pin-up-calendars, I guess I would be more okay
with it, but as we have already discussed, a character does not get better if
you want to fuck it.

Alvene: Nah, not
really. Fuckable characters can certainly appear, but it should not be their
main asset.

AMEN!

Alvene made the Comics
“Loveletter”, “Ich tanze nicht” and the cover for Schattenspiele 2012, among
others. Her deviantart-account is http://alvene.deviantart.com.

·This
used to be a private, casual conversation between the two of us. It´s not a
representation of our generalized opinion on everything concerning art. It´s
also not an attempt to solve the matter, it´s just an exchange of thoughts.

·Just
a quick reminder: We are not talking about aesthetics of real people, we are
talking about art and media, that is something else entirely.

·We
would also like to add that we love and respect each other and each other´s
opinion <3